Social networks ResearchGate and Academia compared to TU Delft institutional repository

I put my papers in ResearchGate or Academia, is that enough for the open access policy at TU Delft?

These and similar questions have been common at open access events and presentations nowadays. Authors want to better understand the differences between these platforms and when they should use one, the other, or some combination. First, a brief primer on what each service has to offer:

ResearchGate and Academia.edu

ResearchGate and Academia.edu are social networking platforms whose primary aim is to connect researchers with common interests. Users create profiles on these services, and are then encouraged to list their publications and other scholarly activities, upload copies of manuscripts they’ve authored, and build connections with scholars they work or co-author with. Essentially these services provide a Facebook or LinkedIn experience for the research community.

Both services are commercial companies. Although Academia.edu has a “.edu” URL, it isn’t run by a higher education institution. The domain name was registered before the rules that would now prohibit this use went into effect, and the address was grandfathered in and later sold to the company. On its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission it uses the legal name Academia Inc.

Comparison between Academia/Research Gate vs Repository TU Delft

Repository TU Academia.eu ResearchGate Delft Long term Yes No No preservation Business model Non for profit Commercial Commercial Sends e-mails NO Yes Yes Wants adress book NO Yes Yes Possible infringment NO YES YES copyrights Fulfills requirements YES No No TU Delft policy on open access Fulfills funder YES NO NO requirements as NWO and Horizon 2020 on open access Author profiles NO Yes. List skills and Yes, via job expertise board. Can upload CV Papers, data, Papers, data, Papers, data, Share files patents, books, Github patents reports

Openness and interoperability

TU Delft Library is often asked by researchers already using ResearchGate or Academia.edu why they should use the TU Delft repository instead (or as well). ‘Why can’t the library just take my information from ResearchGate or Academia.edu and use that to populate the institutional repository?’ The simple answer is: ResearchGate and Academia.edu do not permit their users to take their own data and reuse it elsewhere, nor do their terms of service permit the library to extract that data on the authors’ behalf.

Interestingly, ResearchGate permits you to import publications from other applications, but provides no method for getting that same data out of the ResearchGate ecosystem. Similarly, Academia.edu makes it impossible to bring data in or out of their system. Institutional repositories, on the other hand, are largely committed to complete openness and re-use of data. They make their metadata – the information about what’s in the repository – interoperable and open by using standards like OAI-PMH, PubMedCentral, ArXiv, are all OAI-PMH providers. These kinds of activities make open access repositories good places for publications you want people to be able to find.

Copyrights and open access policies of funders

A frequent asked question is: "Is it allowed to share the full text of my paper on networks as Research Gate?” Uploading the full text, being the authors version or the publishers version, is considered as making it public. If you have published your paper in a journal you should check the publisher’s conditions for reuse. The best place to do so is the SHERPA/RoMEO database. ResearchGate attempts to do an automatic check on this database but if you want to be sure better check yourself. Many of the publications that are available through ResearchGate are actually uploaded illegally in terms of publisher open access policy. By the end of 2017 a lot of papers were removed from ResearchGate because of copyright infringment

Putting a copy of your paper on ResearchGate will not mean that you are compliant with the Open Access policy of TU Delft or funder policies as designed by Horizon2020 or NWO. On the contrary, you may be in breach of publisher policy which means that you still need to upload a copy of your paper to TU Delft Repository (via PURE).

Long-term preservation and access

Open access repositories are managed by universities. The affiliation with a larger institution (with a public service mission) means that repositories as Repository TU Delft are likely to be around for a long time. They employ librarians and data specialists who specialize in ensuring long term archiving and adhere to strict digital preservation policies. Academia.edu and ResearchGate are independent for-profit companies that could theoretically close up shop at any time. Both sites disavow any duty to warn users if they shut down:

 Academia.edu “reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to discontinue or terminate the Site and Services and to terminate these Terms, at any time and without prior notice.”  ResearchGate “reserves the right to change, reduce, interrupt or discontinue the Service or parts of it at any time.”

Use of your contacts and personal data

ResearchGate and Academia.edu don’t have a lot in common with open access repositories, but they do have a lot in common with other social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. They even encourage users to connect those and other services and contacts to their ResearchGate and Academia.edu accounts – sometimes aggressively.

Both sites have a long list of possible types of email notifications, all of which can be turned off, and all of which appear to be turned on as a default.

Open access repositories are not social networking sites. Users can search for work by a particular author, but authors can’t build a friend or collaborator list, and usually can’t manage a profile page. The success of ResearchGate and Academia.edu demonstrate that this is a functionality that scholars find valuable.

The fine print Whenever you sign up for a service, it’s a good idea to read the Terms of Use. Academia.edu’s terms give the company a license to make derivative works (like translations?) based on articles users upload to the site “in connection with operating and providing the Services and Content to you and to other Members.” ResearchGate’s terms include an agreement to have the user’s relationship with the company be governed by German law. And both sites have an indemnification clause, asserting that if the site faces any legal claims arising from things users upload to the site, the user will bear the cost.

Ok, great. But really: what should I use?

In the end, both types of services have unique offerings, and both likely hold some value for researchers. Academic social networking sites, such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu, might be valuable when trying to find others in your field conducting related research, or for providing access to your papers to those people you know use the site.

The value provided by the institutional repository, however — particularly the long-term preservation and commitment to open access, should be emphasized. Until some public commitment has been made, it should not be assumed that the other services provide this, and they will definitely not be considered open access repositories that meet the requirements of participating in TU Delft open access policies.

If your colleagues find a social networking site useful and you can manage the email notification settings, that site might be worth your time. If the typical behavior of commercial social networking sites bothers you – gathering users’ information for their own purposes – be as wary of those that target academics as you are of those with a more general audience. Whether or not you decide these social networking sites are right for you, remember that institutional repositories enable you to share your research widely without trying to mine your address book. If you’re not already using TU Delft repository, take a few minutes to check out the services available to you who offer similar tools for broadening access to your publications, but who have no interest in making a profit from your work.

Courtesy of University of California, Wageningen University, University Exeter